Heartbeats
by Blackberry Explosion
Summary: A Caleo one-shot in which I take the metaphor of the stolen heart quite literally. Involves the time during BoO when he was waiting for a chance to find her again and she was waiting for him to return to her. Minor BoO spoilers. Rated K for slight fluff.


**Don't you just hate it when you click New Story and forget to do Doc Manager and write the summary and everything and almost click Publish when you realize you've forgotten and you have to do the WHOLE THING OVER AGAIN AND AGGGGGGGGH**

**This was written for a friend at school, who's name I will not disclose for the sake of Internet safety. But she likes pie. Also the number pi. **

**The next prank chapter will be coming soon! This just happens to be like the worst time of the year for updates. I'm so sorry. Really. Truly. Sorry. I feel like such a terrible person for not updating. I won't abandon this story. I won't. Swear it on the River Styx and all that. Here's the one-shot, sorry for the rambling. **

His heart is missing.

His heart is missing, and in it's place is something else. Something…smaller, softer. It doesn't belong to him.

Did he steal it? If so, it was an accident. He doesn't really want it. It's too small. It's banging around inside his chest. He'll give it back later. If he can ever find the owner.

But then what will he do? A stolen heart is better than no heart at all. At least his body is still functioning. Barely.

He groans. He knows who this heart belongs to. And he can't give it back because odds are, he's never going to see her again.

This new heart has been broken so many times that it's extremely fragile. Glass that has been shattered, probably more than once, then painstakingly glued back together. Whoever glued it didn't do a good job. Like, at all. He's afraid that if he moves around too much, like if he falls down and lands hard on his back, it will crumble into dust.

If only he could go in there with some trusty duct tape. But duct tape isn't a good tool for heart surgery. Even he knows that, and whoever trusts him with a heart surgery is the same person who keeps a lion on the brink of starvation for a year and then trusts it to walk around in New York City without any casualties.

His mind is flooded with thousands of years of memories, more than his mortal mind can handle. He's been sifting through them, trying to make sense of them. They're murky, indecipherable at some points. He can only make out parts of strong emotion, fear of a threat that could end all illusions of safety, anger at a father who abandons, a trial that judges and sentences without fairness, love for a hero. Despair for that hero. Love for another. Despair for him. Love. Despair. Love. Despair.

A cycle that makes sense, until a hitch in the pattern makes him freeze.

Not love and despair. Despair and then love.

It was not anger she felt. It was despair. Hope she had dared to dream of, despair when an explosion of an arrival blasted it to bits. It was not anger she felt. It was despair.

He can relate to despair. Even with his heart missing, he has his own painful memories. Loving someone and them losing them is the worst pain he's ever felt.

Right now he is immersed in searing agony.

He needs to find his heart and get it back. And he needs to find the owner of this stolen heart and return it.

The smaller heart rattles with every breath he takes. It's thrum is queer, out of time. Shattered so many times it doesn't even beat properly.

He imagines holding it in his hands, gently cradling it against his chest. He makes a silent promise to it.

_I will keep you safe. I will not let you break ever again._

Her heart is missing.

Her heart is missing, and it has been replaced with a heart that is much larger. It is squeezing her chest, compressing her lungs so she can barely breathe. Her head spins, and she has to close her eyes to steady her stomach.

Her body, it seems, has grown used to containing a heart that had been broken so many times it was smaller than was healthy. Now this new, bigger heart has everything malfunctioning.

Her heart has been broken, shattered, many times. But she has always been able to pick up the pieces and attempt to mend it. Never has it vanished.

That's when it hits her. This heart does not belong to her.

It makes sense. The memories that swirl inside the heart are not her own. She sifts through them and pieces together the story of a little boy who loved his mother and lost her. A boy who tried to hide who he was and blamed himself for a tragedy that was not his fault. A boy who was happy, before his happiness went up in flames.

Heartbreak is a familiar sensation to her, but that makes it no less painful. And knowing that it is not hers, but the pain of someone she loves, only makes it even more raw.

She takes a deep breath and exhales. There's no way she can give this heart back to the person she knows it belongs to. So she's just going to have to suffer from this one for another three millennia?

Actually, it does kind of make sense. The gods have put her through thousands of year's worth of emotional torture. Might as well throw in some physical pain too.

His smile worms it's way into her mind, and she bites down on her lip to keep from screaming. If she has his heart, what has happened to him? Does he hold her own?

Perhaps he can fix it. Even though he is the most annoying creature ever to walk the earth, he is the only one she would ever entrust something as invaluable as her own heart to. And he is the most brilliant child of Hephaestus to live. She should know. She's met a lot of them. If anyone could fix it, and keep it from permanently breaking, it's him.

And maybe someday he'll find her and give it back to her.

Hope. Hope has been her enemy all these years. Hope has torn her apart as she waits for dreams that won't ever return. Hope is her fatal flaw.

Now, perhaps, hope can be her savior, her life raft, her ticket off this island.

It's a long shot. But her heart has endured for thousands of years. It can continue for a few more.

And as for this heart…

She feels it beating loudly against her chest, loud enough to burst. The sound of a promise. She makes her own.

_I will keep your heart alive until you come back. I will hope for the impossible until the impossible comes true._

The hearts have their own say in this matter.

One is being squeezed ferociously, almost to the point of suffocation. The other is unable to fully take up in it's new place, dangerously shaking around with every move it's owner makes. Neither is very comfortable, or safe. One can shatter at any moment. The other can burst with the wrong move.

Unlike their owners, the hearts know what has happened. It is a phrase well known, a term often used. The stolen heart.

In this case, the metaphor seems to have been taken literally. The hearts were actually stolen from their usual places, quite accidentally of course. But when is love ever anything but accidental?

One heart is young, the other much, much older. Neither is wise. But both sense the meaning of this occurrence. What it means for their owners. And what it means for them.

The hearts contain the soul of their owners, their very essence. If they are apart from their owners too long, they will become nothing more than empty shells with no spirit, no purpose. As for the hearts…

They will crumble into nothingness. This always happens when an owner dies. But only the hearts of the old and sick are ready for this. These hearts are not.

If the owners don't reunite soon, none of them will have a chance.

But the hearts can fight that fate in their own way. They can unleash the memories and emotions of their true owners on their hosts, to help them put together the pieces of the person they've left behind. They can encourage one to find her and fix her. They can teach the other one to wait for the other and never give up on him.

But one heart, already cramped and crowded, has to deal with the eons of memories thrust upon it. It's almost too young to deal with them. The other must stand through waves of emotion coursing through its host, unused to true feeling like that. It's true owner experiences emotions watered down over time, their impact dulled. It's the only way to live forever without going insane. Now it is being pushed to the breaking point.

But both continue beating, both continue living. Both hold on to that last shred of hope that the ingenuity and willingness to wait will stand against all the impossible odds.

And they do.

At long last, when both hearts are clinging to the final breath of life, the owners find one another. The hearts are overjoyed, overwhelmed with relief. All they can feel is desire to sit where they once sat inside their true owner's chest.

But when the hearts return, they both discover something wrong. As the boy lands in the sand and the girl stands over him, one heart realizes that it's space in her soul has grown too large to accommodate it. It has grown to house the other, larger heart. The other finds that it's place has shrunk, the size of the battered heart. The place in his soul no longer fits it. Both have changed with love. Their old hearts no longer fit. Tentatively, the hearts venture out of the owners.

Hearts cannot be outside an owner for long. If they do, they will dissolve. Both hearts are without a permanent home, a place that fits perfectly. Oh, they can make it work inside an imperfect space. If the owner is willing to live a short while. A month or so.

But when the owners connect, the hearts see. Neither heart has ever fallen in love before. Not true love. Not love where the other loves it back. But a heart recognizes love when it sees it.

The hearts collide.

Merging together, the hearts combine, memories and emotions and shattered pieces coming together into one mixture. It froths and seethes with the sheer weight of it. But by the time the girl and boy break apart and climb onto a dragon, the hearts have become a single heart.

It bears the weight of both of their anger and joy, heartbreak and memories. It doesn't live in one. It lives in both.

The two on the dragon's back have no way of knowing this, of course. But they can sense it. Quietly she leans into him, and he takes her hand and squeezes it. The noonday sun becomes midnight, stars illuminating the darkness.

"I love you, Calypso." he whispers.

She leans forward and kisses his cheek. "And I love you, Leo."

******Their hearts beat as one.**

**Aw, Caleo so cute. I hope that makes up for my jerkiness. My name is Blackberry Explosion, have a great day! :) **


End file.
